Whenever I talk to my therapist about things that happened when I was little, I feel embarrassed and ashamed later. One of the biggest times was when I talked about being slapped really hard when I was a toddler. It does feel exposing, but it doesn't seem like it's just because it feels too vulnerable. I think I'm really embarrassed to talk about being hurt (physically yes but mostly emotionally) and not being cared for when I was a child. It feels like I'm sharing all of these examples of reasons why I'm less valuable than other people. It makes me feel like I'm dirty/damaged goods. I think part of me also worries that by telling my therapist (or anyone) these things, that I'll convince them that I'm not worthy of their care either. It's a really deep and heavy thing and I feel a lot of shame whenever I talk about it, even as I'm writing this. Can anyone relate?
I can relate to this, and I have a bit of a theory as to why this happens.
I mean, no doubt it happens for a ton of nuanced reasons, and I bet they vary for everyone.
But for myself, at least, I’ve come to this conclusion (very recently, and it seems super obvious in hindsight):
First, I have cognitive distortions and a felt-sense of shame upon talking about any of it, similar to what you’re describing, because of ambiguous/subconcious nervous system activation that, in the absence of any other way to logically understand it, has been translated to shame by default; my nervous system translates this activation to shame, by default,
because shame is what I was programmed to feel for much of my life, and because this is what I most easily understand/am most familiar with when I do something allegedly Bad…
So the Bad thing (ie, talking about it, and potentially exposing an abuser/caregiver/person with authority) is basically just linked immediately, via neural networks, to feelings of shame/guilt/negative reinforcement.
Because growing up, I learned that to talk about what was happening to me was Bad and, in itself, punishable.
Like, being abused, it’s basically implied (even if it’s never outright stated) that what you’re experiencing cannot be shared. Because we naturally fear escalation of abuse, if we expose the person responsible and (in doing so) anger or inconvenience them, or get them in trouble.
Also, if were abused by a caregiver, our attachment needs (and our needs to feel connected with said caregiver) will likely tell us to protect them, or to care about their wellbeing, no matter whether they’ve earned our loyalty. And if we still feel like we need to protect them, on some level, we might feel like the abuse wasn’t their fault and maybe we’re making a big deal of it, or just deserved it…
Also also, if you ever
did try to tell someone what happened and they didn’t act to stop it, or they didn’t believe you, that’s plenty of negative reinforcement to keep you from talking about it without feeling afraid/embarassed… I know that’s a huge part of it for me.
I… only made the connection very, very recently; only recently understood that, oh, yeah, of course talking about it now is immediately “punished” with immediate negative reinforcement from my own brain, now that there’s nobody else to punish me for having basic autonomy and a voice of my own.
Basically, I guess my point is that our neural networks will connect the cause with the effect, and our brains will fill in the blanks with narratives to make it
make sense to us, somehow (like, our subconcious going “oh I feel activated talking about this thing, it must be because talking about the thing is Bad,” or “oh I routinely experienced abuse, I myself must be Bad, who am I to complain?.”)
Idk if this is totally obvious to anyone else but I had this “a-ha!” moment recently and now this makes so much sense.
I started telling some friends about my trauma in relative detail a few years ago, and it always made me feel like an anvil was about to fall on my head and squash me, and they’d laugh and laugh at my cartoon flattened Roadrunner body. Recently I told my doctor about why I have PTSD, basically outlining 7 years of abuse, and afterwards I felt like I’d gone bungee jumping.
